


Boogeyman

by idrilswritings (idrilhadhafang)



Series: Idril’s Short Stories [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Betrayal, Heavy Angst, Mass Murder, Original Fiction, Other, POV Second Person, Short Story, Swearing, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 21:29:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilswritings
Summary: When a young woman’s mentor betrays her, she has no choice but to confront him.





	Boogeyman

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Unhappy Ending

“Don’t let them get to you,” Nick Jones says one day, after a particularly bad moment when you’re training with the famous organization called the Balancers, people who keep peace between the supernatural and human worlds.   
  
You take a deep breath. You’re fifteen years old, and you’re still trying to calm down from Emily Davison’s taunts. It’s not easy, of course; you’re fifteen, after all, and your skin isn’t just thin, but tender and seeming to invite other people to prick at it to see if you bleed. “Easier said than done.”  
  
Nick sits next to you. He’s in his thirties but already has gray hair. It’s one of those traits that makes you worry about him despite yourself.   
  
“Lily,” he says, “It’s hard. But it’s going to get better. You’re going to go on to do great things, I just know it. You’ve got a lot of potential in you.”  
  
A weak smile tugs at your lips. “I hope so.”  
  
“I know it.”  
  
You turn to look at him, smile. You’re grateful for his presence, his reassurance. Sometimes you wonder what kind of things he sees in you. Things you probably don’t know existed.   
  
***  
  
“Those...fucking...arrogant...sons of bitches!”  
  
You don’t wince at his colorful choice of vocabulary as much as the sheer explosiveness of his anger. It’s one thing to find variations on the word “fuck”; it’s another to be so angry that it seems to be radiating off the other person — Nick in this case — like sheer heat. You sigh. “Got a memo back?”  
  
“Yeah, the Council of Useless has decided to, in their infinite wisdom, do nothing about what’s been happening at the borders. All those people getting preyed upon by the shapeshifters, and the Council decides to be lazy...creatures.”  
  
“You can swear, you know,” you say.   
  
Nick snorts. “Let’s face it, Lily; they don’t care about anyone else but themselves. They claim to be upholding balance and all that nonsense, but after everything...well, they don’t care about keeping the borders safe. Not even a little bit. It’s not about being good people. It’s just keeping up...appearances.”  
  
“Nick, I’m seventeen,” you say. “I’ve heard a lot worse than ‘fucking’.”  
  
“And I wish you didn’t,” Nick says wryly.   
  
“Well,” you say. “People get...creative.”  
  
Nick snorts. “Remind me to thank them for corrupting your vocabulary.”  
  
Silence. Then you smile a bit. After a while, Nick’s face softens. You’re not laughing hysterically; it seems that those days are long gone. Gone in sunny fields and blue skies.   
  
He sighs. “Whatever happens, I’m not resting until I find a solution, Lily. I’ve got to.”  
  
And you hope that he succeeds.   
  
***  
  
You’re nineteen years old when he ultimately sides with the monster known as the King of Down Below.   
  
You argue with him until your voice is hoarse, but he insists that because the monster was a friend of his, he can’t just fight against him. “I can’t betray you,” he says, “But so help me, I can’t betray him either. You have no idea how much this is killing me, Lily.”  
  
What about the rest of us, you want to say, but God, it’s like the words won’t come out.  
  
Nick continues. “Really. You have no idea. You could come with us. He’s promised to make the borders safer.”  
  
“I’m not stupid, Nick. I know what he’ll really do.”  
  
“Really?” he says. “Or is it what the Balancers want you to think?”  
  
How can he even act like you need to be enlightened? You know what the King has done. If anyone had told you at, say, age twelve, that your friend was going to go off on slaughter sprees with a monster, and want you to join him...you would have assumed they really, really hated Nick.   
  
“My thoughts are my own,” you say. “I belong here, Nick. I’m sorry.”  
  
Nick sighs. “So this is it. You too?"  
  
And even after he leaves, clearly angry, even outraged at how you refused him, you can’t help but wonder how it would have gone differently. If he’d stayed behind.   
  
***  
It’s two years later when you confront him. You’re twenty-one years old, and every step you take towards him is like you’re stepping through molasses. Or, for that matter, quicksand. You know full well what you have to do. The man that you thought was your hero decided to go out on a limb and betray everyone. That...that you can’t forgive. And at the same time, you can’t help but feel a sort of gap in you — you are basically an amputee. You are a woman with a missing limb. An emptiness where a friend used to be. Where a mentor of sorts used to be.   
  
But you have to be strong. That’s the thing, isn’t it? Being strong like the heroines you read about in books and saw in movies and played as in videogames. You have to be strong. No matter the fact that you want to curl into a ball at the very thought, you have to stand your ground, you have to fight.   
  
You walk towards him. He’s overlooking a burning landscape, and you wonder if he set the fire, or if one of his evil fucking cronies did it. Either way, the emptiness fades to be replaced by anger and sorrow for the people who likely burned alive, and for what? Someone’s demented cause?  
  
He doesn’t turn around. He knows you’re there, even though you wish that you could have gotten the drop on him. “Lily,” he says, “Been a while.”  
  
“This isn’t a fucking happy reunion,” you say. You’re angry now. More than angry. “Did you set the fire?”  
  
He’s quiet. Then, “They were already dead when I set the fire.” Like, somehow, that’s supposed to make it all better.   
  
“So you killed them and set a house on fire,” you say, angrily. “You really are the paragon of assholery, aren’t you...Nick?”  
  
That’s not what he goes by nowadays, of course. He goes by multiple names — the boogeyman, for example. But calling him Nick seems to make him freeze in his tracks, go so still that he seems to nearly shake. You can’t help but feel a twinge of satisfaction that you managed to hit the mark. Serves him fucking right.   
  
“My name,” he says, “Isn’t Nick. That goddamn ghost passed over a long time ago.”  
  
“Funny,” you say, “You’re kind of right. I just wanted to get under your skin a little. You’re not Nick anymore. The Nick I knew would have tried to save lives, not take them.”  
  
“Nick was weak!” He practically bellows the words. “He was a piece of shit excuse for a man and he got what he deserved.”  
  
“He was a better man than you are right now!” you say.   
  
He turns to look at you. The ink-black tattoos on his cheeks seem to be practically carved into his face. He could pass for, say, Darth Maul from Star Wars. You wonder if he applied the tattoos himself. He probably did. Nick believed in dedication, after all.   
  
“So you’re gonna kill me?” he says. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, you betraying bitch?"  
  
“Oh,” you say. “I betrayed you? You betrayed all of us when you joined him, Nick. I couldn’t go with you.”  
  
“You think I’d actually turn my back on a friend?”  
  
“I wasn’t enough for you.” You realize that with an intensity that feels like a knife to the stomach. A really sharp kitchen knife. “I never was.”  
  
"Damn right you weren’t."  
  
You’re not just angry. Tears are pricking at your eyes, and they burn like fire.  
  
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Nick begins, but you don’t want to hear it.   
  
“Bullshit you didn’t.” You take a deep breath. “I didn’t want to do this, Nick. I never did. But I’m not gonna kill you. You’re going into custody, and from there...they’ll do what they can with you.”  
  
The snarl that comes over Nick’s face is enough to make him look almost feral, almost bestial. You realize that any humanity in him is all but overwhelmed by the monster that’s taken his place. “You’re gonna have to fucking kill me.”  
  
He draws his weapon. A sword, used back in the days when he was killing monsters that threatened the world of Norms. You remember when he used to be a hero. Damn, but do those days seem long gone.  
  
You draw your own sword. You don’t want to kill him. Something in you, faint but there, is insisting on it, remembering back when he was a good man. You’re going to have to find a way to break past the monster into the man, and failing that, take the monster into custody.   
  
You just hope you’ll succeed. 


End file.
